Dear brothers and sisters, today the Word of God leads us
to a decisive moment in the lives of Solomon and Jesus. In the first
reading, King Solomon, who once stood at the center of Israel’s covenantal
hope, blessed with an unprecedented wisdom that had never been and will never
be, is confronted with the challenge of persevering in faith in his old age. In
the Gospel, Jesus is challenged by a woman considered an outsider to the Jewish
faith. Her faith was tested and proven to be humble and solid.
In the book of Kings, the decisive phrase is painfully simple: “When Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart after other gods” (1 Kgs 11:4). Scripture does not first say that he abandoned the Temple or that he ceased to offer public worship. It speaks of the heart. In biblical language, the heart is not merely the seat of emotion; it is the core of discernment, the place where a person listens and chooses. Solomon had once asked for a “listening heart” (cf. 1 Kgs 3:9), a heart able to hear rightly so that he might judge justly and discern between good and evil. Now the tragedy is that the heart that was trained to listen to God gradually learns to listen elsewhere. The drift begins before the collapse is visible. Solomon’s story reveals to us that spiritual battle starts within the heart. Our words and actions mirror what is in our hearts and finally how we perceive ourselves and others.
Serving God with Undivided Heart: The text describes Solomon’s heart as no longer “whole” or “complete” in relation to the Lord. One can hear behind it the Hebrew sense of shalem, an undivided integrity. The covenant does not primarily ask for impressive religious performance; it asks for a whole heart. It is for this reason that Deuteronomy 6: 4-8 is very emphatic on what is demanded of us from God: worship Him with our whole heart, our whole being. Idolatry, therefore, is not simply a ritual mistake. It is a fragmentation of love, serving God with an undivided heart. When God is no longer the living reference point, other allegiances begin to colonize the soul. And this happens gradually until the dramatic moment. Solomon not only tolerates rival worship; he becomes its patron. He builds high places, lends the weight of his authority to what will later wound his people. What started as a private compromise becomes a public structure. This is why the Lord’s word to Solomon is so severe. God speaks as one who has loved faithfully: “Since this has been your mind… you have not kept my covenant” (cf. 1 Kgs 11:11). The divine accusation is not petty; it is the language of wounded covenant love. Yet even here, divine judgment is not sheer destruction. God’s “no” contains a surprising mercy: the kingdom will be torn, but not in Solomon’s lifetime. The text insists on God’s fidelity to David and to Jerusalem, an insistence that points beyond human failure to a divine steadfastness that will not be annulled.
In other words, Israel’s future will not rest on Solomon’s achievements, nor will it be finally ruined by Solomon’s compromises. God will preserve a “lamp” in Jerusalem, a remnant of promise that cannot be explained by human merit alone. This is why the Israelites believe that, insofar as there is a single just person in the world, the world will be saved. It is a call not to give up serving God in the face of all the evil we experience in the world. But what is important is the need to take seriously the covenant love of God that is offended by our sins. The consequences of this unfaithfulness are not predictable.
Salvation of Christ is for all: In the Gospel, Jesus enters Tyre, a region associated with the Gentile world, and Mark tells us he “wanted no one to know it,” yet “he could not be hidden” (Mk 7:24). The line is almost tender: even when Jesus seeks quiet, people still find him. A woman appears, her daughter tormented, and she begs him to cast out the demon. Mark identifies her as a Syrophoenician, a double marker of otherness, culturally and religiously outside the covenant people.
When God surprise us: And then comes the sentence that unsettles many readers: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mk 7:27). We should not blunt its edge, because the Gospel does not. Jesus speaks within Israel’s priority in salvation history, the “first” of God’s promises. But the woman's response is the real revelation of the scene. She does not contest Israel’s place. She does not demand entitlement. She simply refuses despair. With astonishing spiritual intelligence, she transforms the image: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (Mk 7:28). She accepts the order of “first,” but she claims that even within that order there is overflow. Her argument is not a philosophical thesis; it is a mother’s faith speaking through the logic of love and humility. “If God is truly God, then His abundance cannot be fenced in by human boundaries.”
Jesus allowed his heart to be touched by this woman's faith. Solomon’s heart, surrounded by privilege, becomes divided and finally dulled. The woman’s heart, surrounded by exclusion, becomes sharpened and luminous. Solomon had everything and gradually lost the essentials. The Syrophoenician woman touches the essential with bold humility. She does not ask for a seat at the table; she asks for what mercy cannot refuse.
Jesus’ reply is immediate and decisive: “For saying that, you may go; the demon has left your daughter” (Mk 7:29). The Greek word suggests that the decisive moment has already occurred: the liberation is accomplished, even before she returns home. This is not magic at a distance; it is the authority of the Son of God meeting a faith that touched his heart. In Tyre, in a foreign house, outside the visible boundaries of Israel’s worship, the power of God acts. The scene quietly proclaims what the first reading painfully illustrates: God’s covenant is not preserved by human prestige, but by divine fidelity; and it is entered not only by proximity, but also by faith that clings.
Today’s readings speak to us in an astonishing manner. The danger with religious life is not simply being “in the Church” or “near the Temple.” Solomon was near, and yet his heart drifted from God. The saving grace is not simply being “far.” The woman was far and yet found a way into the heart of God. The decisive question is whether our hearts remain whole, undivided, whether they continue to listen to God and to the human ego.
The Greek philosopher Socrates was said to have said during his defense speech that “the unexamined life is not worth living for a humane being” (Apology, 38a). A heart that doesn’t pause to listen to God could be lost through gradual compromises. The Syrophoenician woman teaches us that we can find God in a persistent cry of the heart, in perseverance, in the humility that dares to say: “Even if I am not counted among the children, I believe your mercy has room for me.”
Perhaps the Word today asks us to examine what quietly turns our hearts away from God, those seemingly small accommodations, those alliances we excuse because they appear harmless. Idolatry rarely arrives as a dramatic revolt; it often comes as a gradual rearrangement of loves. And at the same time, the Word of God invites us to learn from the Syrophoenician woman a faith that is neither bitter nor passive, but confident without presumption. She teaches us how to pray with resignation when doors seem closed. We should learn to pray also with a tenacity that trusts God’s goodness more than it trusts the evidence of the moment.
God’s faithfulness is everlasting: In
the end, God remains what Solomon forgot and what the woman discovered: the
Lord whose love is covenant, faithful, demanding, and inexhaustibly merciful.
And if Jesus “could not be hidden,” it may be because divine mercy is like
that: it cannot remain confined. It breaks out, sometimes in Jerusalem,
sometimes in Tyre, wherever a heart is willing to be opened.
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